Scots Slap Young Drivers With Anti-Speeding Box

There are already lots of limits on speeding -- fixed cameras, police patrols, average speed cameras -- but for the ever-dangerous youth in Scotland, the police want more. Much more.

The Association of Scottish Police have called for black boxes, presumably using GPS and accelerometers, to be installed in young motorists' cars, where they'll gather data and feed it back to insurance companies. This isn't worrying, though -- the terrifying bit is that these boxes would also forcibly restrict speed to a bit below the speed limit (so 28mph in a 30mph zone, for example).

Although I'm obviously in favour of stopping Scotland's boy racers doing handbrake turns on the estate at 3.00am, this plan does seem to raise just a few issues. I mean, what happens if the box misses the decimal point and limits you to 2.8mph, or just breaks down altogether and jams the brakes on at a random moment as you're trying to cross a junction? Ok, so speeding causes deaths, and yes it's a real problem, but this plan doesn't even target everyone -- just 17-25 year-olds, which is unfair to all the young drivers who aren't maniacs (there must be some, right?). It also means handing effective control of a lot of cars (presumably with no override) over to computers, and while I'm not a technophobe that does kind of seem to be setting the stage for a serious disaster. Or maybe I've been watching too much Terminator recently. [Daily Mail]